She ran down her wooden deck steps, tripping over a 40 ounce bottle of Mickey's Ice, abandoned half-drunk on the bottom step the night before. Before he has stumbled up the stairs to bang his fists on the glass deck door.
Before she let him in.
She started to run faster through the freshly-mowed grass of her backyard. Her dark pink toenails specks of dark pink spotting the kelly green lawn. She drank gulps of bright clean air as she ran. By the time she reached the threshold of the forest, her breath was raw and raspy. She sat down, leaning on a cedar tree, the rough bark scratching her skin through the her thin tank top of navy blue linen. She looked up at the matrix of green and brown branches above her, crisscrossing absentmindedly to engineer a pattern that only authorized patches of golden sunlight to sneak down to her face. Her elbows were cool, but her face was sweaty.
Drunken steps clamoring on her cracked linoleum. The clunk of his blockhead against her mirror. His hands fumbling with the bar of lavender soap that lay in a red clay dish her little sister had made in kindergarten on her sink. The door knob turning.
